1. Field of the Invention
During the past several years, competition for building contracts has dramatically increased. The competition for area construction contracts is no longer limited to area architects, engineers, and contractors, but includes competition from national concerns as well. This competitive environment has forced all those involved in the designing and construction of buildings to seek out alternative building materials that reduce on site construction time, minimize labor costs, improve the quality of construction, and lower building energy costs. Keeping pace with an ever changing industry that demands improved methods and materials to reduce labor costs, reduce on site construction time, and reduce building energy costs, this invention relates to an improved highly insulated building material of modular design that can be quickly assembled into a wall by unskilled labor using only small hand tools.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art with respect to pre-insulated modular panels consists mainly of large panels manufactured by sandwiching rigid foam insulation between sheets of metal or sheets of wood. Sandwich panels of this type do not allow for a selection of facing media and do not meet the standards of many city building codes. Normally, sandwich panels require heavy equipment to set into place and time consuming attachment methods to secure to a pre-erected substructure of steel or wood.
The prior art with respect to concrete tilt wall construction consists of field poured or factory poured concrete panels requiring heavy equipment and special supports and tools to set panels in place. Concrete tilt wall panels are restrictive with respect to appearance, are poor insulators and generally require labor and additional materials from other crafts to complete.
Prior art with respect to other forms of wall construction require workman skilled in their individual trade. Walls constructed and finished by masons, carpenters, insulators, dry wall hangers, dry wall finishers, painters and paper hangers take a great deal of time and labor to complete. Prior art construction methods often find corners out of square and straight walls out of alignment which can take away from the walls structurally, in thermal efficiency and in appearance. Additionally, the thermal efficiency of a wall is further decreased due to uninsulated voids found in and around the frames of windows and doors as well as voids formed by the settling of batt type insulation.
It becomes apparent that improvements can be made in wall construction with respect to time, material, quality, and labor requirements.